From: "Robert Comer" 

> I've done some work on VB apps. I think that by the time they're done they
> are almost always no longer 'small UI oriented'... There's good stuff in
VB,
> but I'm a bit cynical about the implied 'free lunch'.

I agree it's not a free lunch, but it does the job and so warrants mention.

> C++ is surely strongly typed.

Yes, I shouldn't have said that -- I was thinking of the problems that
creep in by pointers and values.

>Uninitialised variables are either picked up
> statically at compile time or at run time by recent compilers.

Totally ignored by the programmers in question -- they are warnings after
all, but fatal errors. :(

> Somebody has to 'wrap' the API. Whether vendors should extend languages to
> suit their OS's is a sore point both because of the Sun/MS/Java debacle,
and
> with language purists.

That was kind of a special case, what with it being a language totally
owned by Sun, you wouldn't find that in a language like C++, or what I use
on the AS/400.

- Bob Comer


"Paul Ranson"  wrote in message
news:40227a3b{at}w3.nls.net...
> "Robert Comer"  wrote in message
> news:402275b0$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> > I'm curious, why?  Why not take it seriously when you take Java and C#
> > seriously?  I pooh-poohed it too when I was only an AS/400 programmer,
but
> > VB has somewhat grown on me and for small UI oriented stuff, it's not
bad.
>
> I've done some work on VB apps. I think that by the time they're done they
> are almost always no longer 'small UI oriented'... There's good stuff in
VB,
> but I'm a bit cynical about the implied 'free lunch'.
>
> > I don't agree that the transform has to have room for carelessness.
Strong
> > typing, parameter checking, and forcing variable initialization would
help
> > this area *immensely* and it wouldn't slow down C at all.
>
> C++ is surely strongly typed. Uninitialised variables are either picked up
> statically at compile time or at run time by recent compilers. A while ago
I
> was playing with a free OCR app, written in the worst kind of impenetrable
> C, I built it with C++ and was slightly surprised to have warning boxes
> popping up at runtime regarding uninitialised variables.
>
> > Heck, I'm not sure that using OS API's directly is a "good" thing
anyway.
> > (language features and the compiler should handle all that stuff.)
>
> Somebody has to 'wrap' the API. Whether vendors should extend languages to
> suit their OS's is a sore point both because of the Sun/MS/Java debacle,
and
> with language purists.
>
> Paul
>
>

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